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Writing from Geneva, analyst Scott Hamilton said Thursday that he has learned EADS executives plan to decide within days whether to bid on the U.S. Air Force’s aerial refueling tanker contract.

EADS has said it needs the Pentagon to extend its tanker bid deadline by 90 days to give the company time to put together a proposal without former tanker partner Northrop Grumman, which pulled out of the contest earlier this month.

“Indications are that the DOD will grant an extension,” Hamilton wrote.

That wouldn’t surprise me, given Pentagon officials’ strong stated preference for a competition, rather than a sole-source award to Boeing. That said, powerful Democrats are putting on a lot of pressure not to push the deadline, and this week’s final World Trade Organization ruling that European governments improperly subsidized Airbus programs, including the tanker platform A330, added fuel to their arguments.

EADS could conceivably offer a cut-rate price to beat out Boeing’s smaller 767-based tanker (here’s a Seattle Times report with more on that), but Boeing would still seem to be the favorite.

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate.